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Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma Race Report

Sonoma, California (August 22, 2010) — Starting from fourth place on the grid, driver Alex Tagliani had great hopes for round 13 of the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series held Sunday at the Infineon Raceway road course, in Sonoma, California. Unfortunately, his dream of another top five finish vanished quite rapidly as his first set of tires lost all grip starting on lap 14 of the 75-lap race. He lost several positions, and four laps later, an opponent punted his FAZZT racecar, puncturing the right rear tire. When he came out of the pits on lap 19, he dropped down to 23^rd overall. Several incidents marked the sixth running of the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma, and Tagliani, who had moved up to 15^th by lap 53, got involved this time with Hideki Mutoh who spun him around. Once again, Tagliani found himself down in 20^th place. Fortunately for the Canadian driver, several drivers started again to bump one another off and he climbed back to 14^th place at the checkered flag after passing Vitor Meira on the last lap.

 “It was a tough day; unfortunately the first set of tires went away more quickly than we anticipated,” Tagliani said. “We lost a few positions and then coming into turn 11 on lap 18 I’m not sure who punted me but I got hit and got a flat right rear tire. After that, we were just trying to recover. We got back up to P15 and then, I was punted by Mutoh (Hideki) in turn 7 which put us to the back again! I’m really proud of our team. We fought back to get a 14^th place finish, which helps us for the championship. Three incidents in one race left us too much to do to get the result that we wanted which is unfortunate.”

Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma Qualifying Report

Alex Tagliani Impressive in Sonoma qualifying with a fourth-place on the grid

Sonoma, California (August 21, 2010) — On a racetrack unknown to the FAZZT Race Team and especially to Alex Tagliani, the Canadian driver showed great skills all weekend long on the Infineon Raceway road course to post the fourth best time in Saturday’s qualifying. Tagliani will start round 13 of the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series from the outside or row two, next to Dario Franchitti. The dedicated work done by the rookie team over the course of the last few months finally paid off even though Tagliani had to wait five months, since the opening round in Brazil, before making it back to the Firestone Final Six qualifying. In Brazil, Tagliani qualified second on a track no one else in the IRL knew. This weekend in California, a track that has been on the IndyCar schedule for the last five years, the rookie team was in the top four in all sessions.

 “It was a great showing for our team obviously,” Tagliani said. “Since we made major technical changes on the car at Mid-Ohio, it has been all positive and everything we have tried on this track has worked. I’m very proud of what the team has been able to accomplish and to make major changes in our approach in the middle of the season was a bold move that seems to be paying off. Rob Edwards, Allen McDonald, and the entire FAZZT team have been making great calls, which have really helped the team. I’m very proud to finish the road course qualifying segment on a very good note and hopefully tomorrow we can continue what we’ve been doing the last couple of weeks.”

A very quick lap by Tagliani on his final run propels him to third

Sonoma, California (August 20, 2010) — Canadian driver Alex Tagliani almost drove a perfect lap on his final run in the opening practice session of Round 13 of the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series held Friday at the 3.707 km Infineon Raceway road course located near Sonoma in northern California. On his final circuit, Tagliani bettered his previous best lap time by more than a second and three tenths to jump from 20th on the chart to third overall, only 26 hundredths of a second from Dario Franchitti, the quickest of the 25 drivers registered for this race. Tagliani’s best lap time was clocked at 1 minute 18.5661 seconds for an average speed of 169.827 km/h, while Franchitti stopped the clock at 1:18,2969 (170.411 km/h) Will Power was second quickest with a time of 1:18.3011, only four thousandths of a second from Franchitti.

Scott Dixon finished fourth ahead of Justin Wilson and Marco Andretti. On Saturday, following the afternoon practice session, the knockout qualifying round will begin at 5:30 p.m. The elimination rounds will eventually set up the Firestone fastest six drivers of the day who will battle for the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma pole.

“I’m very happy with the session; the team did a fantastic job getting the car ready for this track,” Tagliani said. “We found some things in Mid-Ohio that have helped us move in the right direction. I think we’ve turned a corner in the last race and even though we didn’t get to test here last week, what we have found has stayed with us. This is my first time on this track so I think we’re going to need to learn the track better and improve our performance at every outing. Overall, I think we finally found what we were looking for, and we now have a car that can run up front.”